Interlude

Four Years Before, This One I Remember

I woke up to the sound of pounding on my door. Three pounds, a pause, then another two. Jacks was up before noon. That’s never a good sign. I rolled out of bed.

“I’m coming,” I muttered, loud enough to make it through the door. I heard Jacks grunt in response and I pulled on a pair of jeans that were wadded up on the ground beside the futon and opened the door. I turned away as Jacks walked into my apartment. I put a cigarette between my lips and rummaged around on the table until I found my lighter.

“I need your help,” Jacks said.

I lit up the cigarette. The first one is always the best one of the day. I breathed in the smoke and held it for a few seconds before letting it out. After I exhaled I looked at Jacks. “Good morning to you, too, asshole.”

“Cut the shit,” Jacks snapped. I could tell that this wasn’t the time for pleasant banter. Jacks wanted to cut to the chase. So we cut to the chase.

“What’s the case?”

“It’s not a case,” Jacks informed me. “It’s a personal thing.”

I raised my eyebrow. “A personal thing?”

“Yeah, a friend of mine’s in some deep shit and I need you to watch out for her until we get shit straightened out.” Jacks was on the defensive. More so than usual, and worse than that, he was wound tight. That meant that this was some serious shit I was getting into.

“Jacks, you know I ain’t a fucking babysitter,” I told him. I hated doing guard jobs. The people I wound up watching were always irritating. By the end of the job, I usually wanted them dead more than the people they were worried about. Jacks knew this.

“Levi, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important to me,” he told me, calming down a bit. “You’re the best man for the job and I know I can trust you.” I paused with the cigarette halfway to my lips. Jacks doesn’t normally get that deep. This was serious. Jesus. I stood from the futon and made my way to the kitchen. I got the feeling that I was going to need a drink. I held up the bottle of rum to Jacks and he nodded. I poured two glasses and handed one to him.

“All right,” I said when I was finished gulping down the booze. “What are the details?”

“A friend of mine has a contract out on her,” he told me. “A guy wants her dead for nabbing something that belonged to him. I just need you to keep her out of sight and out of mind until this whole thing blows over.”

“Blows over?”

“Yeah.” Jacks polished off his glass. “Until we get enough on him to put him away or until one of the contracts that are out on him come to the forefront.”

That was one thing that I always admired about Jacks. He didn’t care who took the scumbags out. At the end of the day, as long as they were wearing a toe tag, it was just the same to him. I liked the way he thought things through, but I was still not entirely persuaded to babysit for him.

“I don’t think I’m up for it,” I told him. I snuffed out my cigarette in the ashtray.

“Levi, I was asking only as a courtesy,” Jacks stated. “I need you to help me out. You owe me.”

I leaned back into my futon, bringing my palms up to my eyes. The month before, Jacks had put his badge on the line by letting me go talk to one of his arrests. To make a long story short, the arrest was eventually made, but the guy showed up on the cell block a lot worse for wear. Jacks was questioned at length about abusing the prisoner. Needless to say, nothing terrible happened. I brought my hands back down to my sides.

“What do I need to do?” I asked.

“Get ready to jet,” he said, and handed me a torn piece of paper and a key. “She’s at this address. No one but me and you know that she’s there.”

“What’s her name?” I asked, taking the paper and the key and lighting another cigarette.

“Maise.”

“So, I just got to go over and sit with her?”

“You gotta make sure that she stays out of harm’s way.”

“What time does she get her bottle?” Jacks shook his head and walked out the door. I called after him, “What about her nap?”

“Fuck off,” Jacks called as he walked down the hallway. I looked down at the paper in my hand. Great. Not only did I have to babysit, but it was in a shitty neighborhood to boot. I set the paper down on the table and got up to start my day.

After showering, I headed out to my Lincoln and drove to the apartment complex where Maise was holed up. I pulled into the first open spot and cut the engine. I took inventory of the lowlives hanging around the apartment complex. Most of them were Latino, with a few blacks and wiggas sprinkled in to give it some spice. I opened the car door and was greeted by the wafting smell of pot and the throbbing bass line to some bullshit slow jam. I looked at the address on the building in front of me and walked toward the door where three gangbanging thugs were standing around smoking a joint and being useless.

“Yo, vato, that’s a nice ride,” one of them said as I passed them. I turned around and looked at the Lincoln, mentally saying good-bye to my hubcaps.

“Thanks, esse.” I nodded. “You seen any interesting people around here lately?”

“There’s always interesting people around here, man,” he told me. “Shit, I’m talking to one right now.” His boys laughed like he was Don Rickles.

I pulled a fifty out of my wallet. “You let me know if you see anybody who doesn’t belong, comprende?” The thug nodded. I turned to enter the apartment complex but the thug tapped my shoulder. I turned to look at him.

“You want to buy a rock, man?” he asked. He saw that I had money and his Spidey sense had told him I wasn’t a cop. He was like a scavenger.

“No, thanks,” I said, opening the door. “I kicked the habit.”

When the door closed shut behind me, I kind of wished I had stayed outside a little longer. The hallway smelled like a mixture of piss and feet. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the single light that was barely living halfway down the hallway. Jacks had better hurry up and take care of this case. If I stayed here too long I might never be able to eat again.

I stepped over the drunken Mexican sleeping on the stairway and heard my foot crush a cockroach. This place was beyond disgusting. I felt like no amount of soap and water would ever wash the filth off of me. I hurried up the stairs and down the hallway. At least this hallway was a touch brighter. There was a light just outside the door of 213. I took my jacket off and twisted the light out of its socket. I crushed it and scattered the shards on the ground. That was taken care of. I put the key into the lock, hoping that Maise was a clean freak.

I pushed open the door and was met by a thin girl holding a rifle at my chest. I raised my hands and stepped cautiously into the room, closing the door behind me. She kept the rifle trained on me.

“Name’s Levi,” I told her. “Jacks sent me up here. You must be Maise.”

“Let me see some ID,” she whispered. I kept one hand raised and slowly pulled out my wallet from my back pocket. She jerked her head. “Toss it over to me.” I nodded and lobbed it underhand so it hit the ground at her feet. She bent to pick it up and studied my license.

“How about putting the barrel of that thing down?” I asked. She looked from the license to me and back again before she hesitantly lowered her weapon. What a fucking greeting. I don’t hit women, but it took all my self-control to keep my hand at bay so I didn’t knock her block off. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cigarettes instead.

“Okay, let’s get some things straight between us,” I said after I lit the smoke. “You’re going to listen to what I say and you’re going to do what you’re told.” Maise looked at me with her big blue eyes and nodded her head. She looked like she was about to cry. I felt a slight twinge of guilt for wanting to punch her out a few moments earlier. She was far too naïve to be living this life. I pushed the feeling of pity aside. Better not to get too involved. Jacks was already involved enough for the both of us. I’d let him deal with that end of things. I took a drag of the cigarette and surveyed the apartment. It was tiny and lacked any sort of furniture aside from a shitty television set.

“For the time being, all we have to do is lay low,” I explained, trying to be a little nicer, “so that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“Well, you might want to think about starting because we’re going to go through a lot of time staring at the wall,” I informed her. I don’t know if she believed me, because she kind of half smiled like I was kidding. A few days later, that smile had been clean wiped away and she was pacing the apartment in frustration.

“We’ve spent the last three days sitting around,” she ranted. “I’ve watched as much television as I can. I’m sick of playing cards and reading magazines and watching you smoke cigarettes. I need to go outside.”

“Sorry, lady,” I said to her, lighting another cigarette to add to the countless I had chain-smoked over the past seventy-two hours. “Not happening.”

“I’ll just go stand in the courtyard. I won’t leave the premises,” she pleaded. “I need to get some fresh air.”

“Open the window,” I told her, “but you ain’t going outside.” Maise groaned in irritation and stormed off to the bedroom, which I was thankful for because at least that meant she was going to shut up and let me sit around in peace for a little while. God, I never want to have kids solely on the off chance that they would survive long enough to be teenagers. Granted, if I did have kids, there’s no way in hell that they would become hookers, so at least I have that going for me. Maise slammed the door to the bedroom. Silence. Thank God for that.

I sat in the living room on the floor, leaned up against the wall, and smoked my cigarette, basking in the quiet. It was too bad that it didn’t last long. Footsteps in the hallway. Jacks would’ve called if he was coming over. No one else knew we were here. It could be a neighbor, but I got the feeling that was doubtful. I froze and listened. The footsteps were coming up the hall. There was more than one person out there. I heard them treading on the wooden floor, trying to be quiet. Then I heard them walking on broken glass and the footsteps stopped. Good thing there was no cleaning crew. Whoever it was that was walking up the hall was now on the other side of the door. I pulled my piece out, cocked it, and jumped across the living area just as the door burst open.

I was right, there was more than one guy. There was at least a dozen coming through the door and those fuckers were all armed to the teeth. I started firing immediately but they just kept on coming. I took down three of them with my gun. I caught another one in the shoulder. One of them rushed me and I fired a wild shot before bringing the gun up to his temple and blowing his mind. Then my piece clicked. Fuck. I didn’t have time to reload so I pulled my knife out and leapt in like a barbarian. These guys weren’t expecting me to be there but they were trained well. They didn’t let the surprise counterattack slow them down. Before I knew it, they were all in the apartment with me. I caught a couple of bullets, but they were only flesh wounds. Didn’t matter, though, they still hurt like a bitch and there was only so much I could do with a knife. I had only taken out two more of them and I pissed off the rest of them. Great.

One of the guys brought his gun up and I grabbed his wrist and broke his arm against the kitchen doorframe. I slammed my palm into his nose. The bone broke and lodged into his brain. One more down. I went for the gun but one of the other guys grabbed a handful of my hair and slammed my face into the wall. I felt my nose shatter. I grabbed his hand and flipped him over me. He landed on the floor, and as I stepped on his throat, someone else tackled me from the side. I fell sideways, bashing my arm into the kitchen, and the dirty son of a bitch that tackled me sucker-punched me in the kidney. I winced for a split second and then all of the bastards were on top of me and I was pulled to the floor. With the beating going on, it took me a second to realize that I still had my knife in my hand. It was only a matter of a few seconds before I felt the warmth of fresh blood pooling around me. Then I was like a shark. The spilled blood gave me a new incentive. I stuck my knife in one of the guys, I couldn’t tell where, but the popping sound it made when it broke the flesh sounded promising. I brought my hand back to stick him a second time but when I felt the back of my hand press up against the butt of a gun, I changed my tack. I dropped the knife and wrapped my fingers around the butt of the gun. The first shot I took, I didn’t aim at anyone in particular. It caught one of the guys in the neck and caught the rest of them by surprise. That was my chance. My adrenaline was running high and I was able to knock the fuckers off of me and scramble to a knee. There were three of them left. They were all lifting their guns. Looked like the odds were against me, but I fired off another shot anyway. I hit one of the guys in the chest. He went over backward and I stumbled toward the living room. I had to keep them away from the bedroom. I turned on my heels and tried to fire off another shot. The fucking gun clicked again. Goddammit. It just wasn’t my day. That’s when the last two guys unleashed on me.

The bullets caught me mostly in the upper body, but one of them pulled high and caught me in the jaw. I felt my jaw shatter and I pitched backward. My back slammed against the bullet-riddled window and I heard it explode around me as I went through it. I tried to gain my balance, but it didn’t help. I could feel myself falling. I saw blue sky for a split second before I hit the ground. Just before I fell into the darkness of a coma, I heard more gunfire. Looked like I fucked up.

When I woke up, days later, I didn’t know where the fuck I was. Then I saw Jacks sitting in a chair next to me. I tried to ask him, but I couldn’t move my lips. Or my arms. Or anything else, for that matter. Thankfully, Jacks saw that I was conscious.

“Hey, guy, welcome back,” he said, a bit more chipper than I expected him to be considering that I had let him down. “You’re in the hospital and you’re gonna be here for a while. You got messed up pretty bad.”

We sat there in silence for a while. Not by choice, mind you, but because I couldn’t speak. I grunted and groaned at Jacks in frustration until he realized that I had no idea what the fuck had happened.

“Calm down, Levi,” he ordered me. “Maise’s fine. She called the cops from the bedroom while you were keeping the guys busy in the living room. We showed up just as you were doing your acrobatics out the window. God damn, I wish we could’ve been there a few minutes sooner, but there was no way. We were hot on Vincent’s heels. Between you at the apartment and my guys at the site, Vincent’s bodyguards took quite a beating. All told, a few of his crew escaped, but I think we took out pretty much all of them.” I waited in silence for Jacks to fill me in on Vincent himself. I widened my eyes to tell him I was waiting in anticipation.

“Maise’s out of the woods,” he told me. “Vincent was taken care of. I wish I could take credit for that, but he was dead when we found him. I don’t know who the hell did it, but they were professional. They knew that his guards were busy and they took advantage of that.”

Jacks continued talking, but I didn’t care about the rest of the story so I didn’t really listen. I perked up a bit when he started talking about my injuries and found out that I had to have my jaw rebuilt, I had lost a lot of blood, and had a lot of tissue damage, but it was all expected to heal up just fine over the course of the next couple years. Jacks told me I was a lucky prick that I hadn’t broken anything when I went out the window. I had landed in some bushes and wound up with no more than some scratches from the fall.

I closed my eyes on that note. Yeah. I’m a lucky fuck. Remind me of that after I reach the end of recovery road.